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Tuesday, 13 January 2015

“We always feel our reality isn’t enough. So we consume drugs and give ourselves artificial memories; we want to escape from the confinement of our lives. But I assure you that the only way to resolve the conflict is to learn to accept it and find your own place in the world.”

There is something about our generation which is so clinically wrong.

Depression, anxiety, weight and the constant change and speculations of right and wrong.

Never has there been such an epidemic of sadness which overwhelmed crowds of teenagers.

Parents so confused and oblivious to the idea that maybe, just maybe, their kids fell into darker years than they had before them.

Maybe it isn't us.

Maybe it is the people around us, the friends and foes that surround our minds and fulfil our hours.

Its the people we invision to be and we wander around. Its being shown and taught that life is meant to be lived in a certain state of mind and that certain state of mind isn't ours.

Is it possible that drug use, recreational alcohol, and other reckless acts of freedom from the kids of our generation is our own way of saying that there are too many rules, there are too many no's.

I grew up in a perfect neighbour, with a solid family and a loving home. I grew up with a rich and fulfilled childhood and was never poor of attention.

I was wealthy with food and greedy with materials and yet there was something which still left me feeling empty.

I don't know what it was or what could of caused it, and then I became aware.

I grew up in a society which built walls around difference.

Where being different was classified as abnormal and change was marginalised.

Where gender and sexuality needed labels to be defined and women and men were still labeled equal yet feminism became necessary.

I have grown up in a society where wars have become silenced and acts of terrorism became media.

Where skin colour meant opinion and wealth meant health.

I am still growing up within a world where image defines your personality, your occupation defines your status and love still needs a certificate to be determined.

And when I sit back and someone asks me about my blog posts or questions why it is I write to express certain emotions, it is because of this simply.

Our world doesn't accept notations of sadness, or illness or difference.

We like to believe that throughout the years we have grown as humans and a race as one.

We like to think that equality has been made, that culture has become accepted in every avenue and that emotions can be justified.

But we all know, or at least I have come to the recognition that we haven't.

And to be entirely honest, when people say that our generation is spoilt, and that drug use has increased immensely and that depression has become a regular diagnosis in kids my age, I am not shaking my head in disbelief.

Instead, I agree.

We have been given false ground and fake guidelines on what it means to live.

We are sheltered from what it feels like to be natural and to what it means to really feel in the worlds.

We are silenced when we have questions and we are ignored when we protest or raise our arms.

We are told not to worry when something seems irregular, and when someone asks why it is that we are sad, or why it is we have lost weight or why it is we are constantly trying to improve or change our lives...what are we answering with?

We are sad because we are ill informed of what it is we are meant to be.

We are meant to look and feel specific ways although we apparently have the 'right of speech' and freedom.

We lose weight because society has deemed beauty as the size of your waist.

We make resolutions and wishes and pray of shooting stars to change and become something of ourselves because we are always told that we can do better.

That today is wasted but have hope in tomorrow.

Popping champagne and cheering for slimmer legs, healthier kids and more money, the world we live in isn't much of a beautiful reality.

And thats the truth of it all.

You ask me, you ask my generation why it is so many of us drink, do drugs or seem more depressed than any generation before us?

Because we are real, we are living, and we are trying to become and define exactly who we are without falling into the same facade as the generations before us.

Instead of deeming our generation as foolish and wild, consider us as a generation that is true. Surviving in a world with so many agendas and rules.

Being born into a lifetime that requires wealth, intelligence and beauty, consider our generation as strong.

We are fighting for what it still feels like to be a child, we are fighting for equality, culture, sexuality and difference.

We have grown up learning how to fight and we are now learning how to defend ourselves from becoming a generation which is moulded by politics, voices and rights from wrongs.

Our generation is different.

And I have never been prouder."I think it's really fucked up how so many teenagers are alone and sad and are having panic attacks in their rooms while their parents watch TV, and how a lot of those teenagers have had relatively normal childhoods, yet there's this huge boom of depression and ED's and mental disorders and it's dumb how we've turned into a generation labelled as "reckless" but really, we are only reckless with ourselves".

Sunday, 11 January 2015

“As you think, you travel, and as you love, you attract. You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.”

One minute you are graduating from middle
school to high school and before you know it, you are expected to know exactly
what it is you want out of life.

I have always had aspirations and goals and dreams to be bigger and better than I am today, but nobody ever warned me that things couldn't always be bought. Love wouldn't always be mutual and rules weren't always going to be in your favour.

I guess time needs time itself and the only hard part about growing up is not knowing. It's the warnings and the promises, the do's, don'ts and maybes and everything in between is left up to fate.

There is something about waking up every morning, with no job to go to, no school work to do, no real motivation or inspiration for the day, that can drive a person insane.

Its spending twelve years of your life learning about the world, languages, history, numbers and letters, all to be left with nothing.

Its meeting new people, gaining friends and losing them too, its finding your own ground and creating your own personality that makes growing up worthy.

But what happens when you lose sight of everything you used to call home.

I used to be able to recite trigonometry off the back of my hand and I could picture exactly what it was I wanted to do with myself.

I used to be able to run 10 km's without stopping and I used to think 9:00am was a sleep in.

There are days where the sun sets and I'm still sitting in my bed wondering what it was that made people want to get up in the morning. There are days where I sit and read the same page of a book I have already a thousand times before, over and over again, just to fill in the time.

I was told life started once you left the school gates and when you became 18 thats when you really started to feel the rest of the world around you.

But there are sunrises that I sleep through and sunsets I turn my back to, all because I am too busy focusing on what it is I want out of tomorrow.

I am too busy thinking and dreaming of what I want from my future, that I forget to live in my present.

Then I remember.

Today is my future, and today is my past.

Today is a reason to live, to get up and do something with my life and just because I don't have enough savings, or working my dream job or spend my time being productive in something classified as a sport or hobby...doesn't mean that I am not yet living.

Living is breathing, reading, walking and seeing.

What I do with today impacts tomorrow and before I discovered what it really meant to feel alive, I started to recognise the beauty in simplicity.

I may want to be a journalist today, but its okay if I want to be a doctor tomorrow.

It's okay if I love today and cry tomorrow and then kiss three people under the moon.

It is right if I sit in bed drinking tea and reading the same line three hundred times over, as long as it creates a fire in my heart.

As long as I am doing the things that make me happy, put a smile on my face and leave me lying in bed at the end of the day breathless muttering the words "this is what it feels like to be alive", then I am more than okay to be growing up.

It doesn't matter if you are sixteen years old or forty five years young, if you are stuck doing something that makes you dream of a better future, then you need to do something about it, make a change.

A future shouldn't be a dream and we shouldn't pray that tomorrow be 'better'.

Today should be great and yesterday should be worse than today because tomorrow will only ever become greater.

I made a vow, that I would stop burying my promises and my dreams in tomorrow and that I would start living and doing things for today and today only.

One step at a time, I would conquer everything that I wanted from my present and only by doing this, would I create a better now that resolves in a greater future.

I think you should too.

Our future is something that is made up of what we are doing right now, what we have already done and what is yet to come, don't let it be a plan...let's make our future an action.

Sunday, 4 January 2015

"There is not one person on this earth that isn't cripplingly sad over something. Remember that next time you go to open your mouth."

First contact

He was so beautiful.

There was something about the child in him that made you want to giggle and jump and throw your fists on the carpet like you did when you were nine.

The way he snuck his hand into your lap under the table made you choke on your fork and the way his fingers trace the lower of your spine made goosebumps become desirable.

As your parent's records came on the sound system in your living room, he picked you up from the fort of pillows you were drowning in and spun you around the coffee table.

It was the first time you felt like this was real.

His hand guided your waist and the two of you stumbled around the dining table and although it was only one of the first few nights you had spent together, you could see yourself spending the rest of your life with him.

It was when he slept which made you tremble.

The way his body surrounded yours without notion. He embraced you at your weakest point in the night and just before you could become worried about the future or falling head over heels or remembering your past, his arms snuck under your arms and around your waist and pulled you in.
For just another night you forgot about a life without him and became a part of him.

Second Contact

He was so comfortable.

Comfortable made you nervous.

Comfortable was what broke you before and you couldn't help but think that it would happen again.

He started to become home and when he becomes home it becomes too hard to walk away from.

He teased you, fired you up, made you cry but he loved you.

The warmth he had within him started fires within you and the two of you were like wildfire.

He burnt down everything that haunted you from your past and together he made a new you.

You were proud of who you were when you were with him, and he made you feel like the world was weightless.

He was everything that you thought he wasn't and this was either very dangerous or he was about to be the best thing that ever happened to you.

You had seen love, you had once felt love, but a love like this was everything compared to nothing and his hand entwined with yours was every example of that.

His smile brought out the good in you and even when you were angry at him, when you heard the laughter that echoed from his stomach, you couldn't help but run your hand through the hair on the back of his head and melt onto his shoulder.

He was what you thought of every morning when you saw the glow of the sun over the breaking waves and he was what sent you to sleep feeling safe and secure.
A life without him in it became almost unseeable and although this is what love was meant to be like, you couldn't help but feel the danger that lurked behind the bliss.

Totality

This was everything.

He was everything.

Your own personal eclipse. He came into your life silently, unexpectedly and now he is the one that stands before you, blocking you out from everything that once used to scare you in this world.

With him, everything became reasonable, everything became possible, with him you became powerful and beautiful. Everything he said he saw in you, you felt and you became the glow around the moon when the sun blocked it from view.

There was a magic, something that clicked. It hadn't been long and life with him seem protected, but the way you two belonged together made love seem easy and the way two people became one without risk or fear gave love another meaning.

People asked what it felt like, how did you do it, how were you so lucky to find each other.

It wasn't simple and it never was easy to define what it was that was lit between the two of you, but people laughed and smiled and a love that danced within you two gave hope to others.

For once you were finally happy.

Your bridges had been burnt, your walls were tall and for a while there you were becoming lost in a world that terrified you.

Uncertainty, lack of faith and pain spread over you like a rash and then you met him.

You fell for every fibre of his being and the love you had for him could of saved lives. You had never possessed the kind of love you now had and it was only now that you realised why people die for love. It was this kind of love which made homes and families and it was this kind of love which either made or destroyed people.

Third Contact

It was your gut.

A premeditated pain didn't prepare you for what was to come.

Nights of missed phone calls and empty pillows. Colder bed sheets and empty arms made you realise that there was a part of you you were about to lose.

It was too soon.

You gave up everything for a love like this and there was nothing else in this world which could have felt as bad as this did.

It wasn't final and there was no discussion of dismissal. But in the bottom of your heart, the look in his eye and the kiss he gave you before he said goodbye, didn't sting your lips or make you feel weightless.

Instead he tied ropes to your feet and through you amongst the waves.

There was something about being with someone, that you know no longer wants to be with you, that destroys more than confirmation.

The weeks before were worse than the weeks after.

It was knowing but not yet feeling. It was watching the storm clouds roll in anticipating how heavy the rain might be but forgetting that with rain, comes lighting and thunder.

Fourth Contact

He was a storm that lit up your night for months.

Your world was never quite the same.

It was the darkness of the emptiness he left behind that got you on your knees.

During the days you were fine. Occupied, smiling, breathing, being, it was everything and anything you could have managed. But it was the nights which crept up on you and made you remember what it felt like before he was around.

Life seemed darker than before and it did't matter how many lights were on, how many people you were around or how much you drank or ate, life was dark.

It was darker which made you remember. A life with darkness made you forget what it was like when it was brighter and it made you bitter.

You became angry because you felt a victim of robbery and a love that was stolen from you was worth more than he deserved.

To you he was everything, he was absolute. Because with a love like yours he was invincible. He took it from you but you didn't hate the idea of it either.

It made you lonely and cold, and the days which the sun shined a little bit lighter on, and life became warmer, you were still reminded of him.

The days became longer and you wondered if there would ever come a day where his face wouldn't make you fall to the floor, with your face in your hands.

You stared at ceilings and empty doorways remembering a life which used to carry no burden. Now you were the burden and you considered a life without you in it.

But after days of sweat, tears, smiles and sighs you remembered that even though you missed him, even though you missed a life that you once led, that it didn't mean that it should be the end.

Sometimes you just have to keep hurting, sometimes you have to keep missing them, until one day you wake up one morning and realise that you don't anymore.

Friday, 2 January 2015

Sign of affection, attachment, dependancy or attraction.
There is never a significant time, date, period or moment which defines when we are meant to say I love you.
To some it moves mountains and to others its just another phrase thrown in the air.

I guess, for the first time I said it, it was a little piece of me, which was reserved for someone, become open.

I discovered after a couple of more heart breaks and of course time itself, that that place never really closes.

Unfortunately the rarity of the words also lose their meaning if said too much. But in saying that, if said to someone whom you actually mean it to, it regains its depth.

I love you, is a fragile phrase. Although seen as just words, it is something which we preserve for moments of compassion.

Moments of compassion i hate to say, sometimes pass by too frequently.

But for me, and I guess as well for my viewers, what is the right moment. When is the right time to open up and express a phrase that impacts each single person differently.

What happens when someone says it but doesn't mean it, what does it feel like to say it too much and forget what it felt like to say it for the very first time?

What happens if we mean it to begin with but it dies out in a few months or years?
How do we know when it is the right time to say it, or how do we know we even feel it enough to say it?

Truth is, there is no right answer.

Terrifyingly, everyone will feel it differently, read the timing wrong or maybe never discover what it feels like enough to even want to say it. Although love is defined simply as a strong feeling of affection I couldn't think of a such an incorrect way of defining it.

Confusion, robust, obscure, impeccable, infinite, irrational, irritable, irresistible are probably a few that jump to mind when i think of love. But saying I love you, could amount to a lot more.

But this is all for now viewers, but have a think too about what it means, if you've said and even if you haven't. What does it mean and more importantly, what does it define to you?

Thursday, 1 January 2015

Disintegrate into nothing. But it was the realisation that even nothing was something and that just by being, meant that I was living. I was stronger than I thought, I just couldn't feel it.

Coming into the new year brings the pressure of change. The pressure that there are another 365 days ahead of you to not make the same mistakes as you did the year before.

The pressure of age, time and limits.

The pressure of chance and opportunities and the unlimited hope you can extend into 'nothing' days to be made into 'something' days.

The point i'm getting at....I'm absolutely terrified.

Lately with upcoming university offers, job changes, friendships building and some breaking...I feel like i haven't really caught a break.

I noticed that i hadn't blogged in over 2 weeks, and if i can't even do the thing that i love the most...then i had lost all motivation and ambition in my life.

I'm a struggler, I always will be a struggler.

The overthinking, the presuming, the lack to be satisfied with the now. It all adds up and sooner more than later... I crack.

I get overwhelmed with certain events going on in my life, I see and predict change that I don't want to happen and I, more than anything feel like the life around me is going a million miles an hour, whilst i'm still sitting here trying to figure out what day it is.

Little by little my faith in humanity and feeling 'normal' lessens and I start to block out any part of a life that could challenge me.

I used to think I could be stronger, that I was independent and that at the end of the day if I were to wind up alone, that I would be entirely satisfied with that.

I don't know where I changed or when it happened, but all i know is that I'm sitting at home alone almost pining for company only because i feel alone.

I wrote an article a while back about the differenced of feeling alone and loneliness.

Loneliness is temporary, and this feeling right now feels permanent. Feeling alone is a terrible thing, but as I write this for you, my viewers, I want to enlighten you to know that although there are nights like tonight, that I still know that it will get better.

The day where you no longer foresee things clearing or still hold faith in you becoming stronger is the day you have let being alone take control.

I choose to believe that you are allowed days to be alone, to feel alone, to cry for no reason and to finally let that Jenga block of problems that are building in the back of your head come tumbling down.

I, and you, are allowed to relapse.

To let strength take a break and let a weaker part of you bring you back down to earth.

To remind you that life is hard and for it to become easier, you have to be pushed down a thousand times to know that the life you want is worth feeling pain for.

Relapsing into a state of weakness and feeling alone or sad or any negative emotion, allows us to be reminded that we are only human and that even the better parts of us, cast shadows.